Patriarch Philaret Leads Babyn Yar Memorial

Patriarch Philaret (Denysenko) of the independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church has led a memorial commemorating the victims of the Nazi mass executions at Babyn Yar. The memorial was organized at Babyn Yar for the 70th anniversary of the executions this past Wednesday. After the memorial Patriarch Philaret called for the establishment of a chapel on the site of a memorial to Ukrainian nationalists killed by the Nazis. More (in Ukrainian) here.

The Soviet and Holocaust memorials at Babyn Yar are truly haunting. The district was farmland at the time of the Nazis' massacres and it's said that after the war had ended Kiev's residents refused to buy produce from its fields out of respect for the tens of thousands murdered and buried there.